The Waking Dream: Photography's First Century, Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection

June 19 – September 25, 1994

West Building, Main Floor, Galleries 72 through 79

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: 246 photographs from the Gilman Paper Company Collection traced the early development of photography. The show was divided into 6 sections concentrating on Britain, France, tours of the Mediterranean and Asia, America, the turn of the century, and the early modern period. The National Gallery exhibition in Washington included 6 images not seen in earlier presentations, among them 3 new acquisitions to the Gilman Paper Company Collection. The exhibition, which was originally scheduled to close on September 11, was extended for viewing by the President’s Council on the Arts and Humanities. During the extension, photographs by Gustave Le Gray, Louis-Rémy Robert and Charles Nègre were substituted for works by Édouard-Denis Baldus, which were needed for another exhibition.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Curators were Maria Morris Hambourg, head of the department of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Pierre Apraxine, consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and curator of the Gilman Paper Company collection; and Sarah Greenough, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art.